Conference PaperPDF Available

Use of Wiki systems in Archaeology: Privacy, security and data protection as key problems

Authors:
  • University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna

Abstract

Wikis are powerful, collaborative tools and can be used for educational purposes in many ways. The original idea of a Wiki is to make information accessible to all. However, it is very interesting that experiences in the use of Wikis in educational settings showed that security and data protection of wiki contents is definitely an issue. In this paper, we discuss problems and solutions on the basis of use cases from archaeological education. Interestingly, archaeologists are extremely worried about online accessible information due to the serious danger of archaeological looting. “Tomb raiders”, i.e. people who excavate artefacts of cultural heritage on the basis of information stored in Geowikis, so called archaeological looters, are not aware of the value of cultural heritage, are interested only in the artefacts and destroying the cultural context, which is of enormous interest for archaeological research. Consequently, the protection of archaeological information is one of the most urgent tasks in the preservation of cultural heritage.
USE OF WIKI SYSTEMS IN ARCHAEOLOGY
Privacy, Security and Data Protection as Key Problems
Katharina Holzinger, Andreas Holzinger, Christian Safran
Institute for Information Systems and Computer Media, Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria
Gabriele Koiner-Erath
Institute of Archaeology, Graz University, Graz, Austria
Edgar Weippl
Secure Business Research, Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria
Keywords: Wikis, Archaeology, Education, Security, Privacy, Data Protection.
Abstract: Wikis are powerful, collaborative tools and can be used for educational purposes in many ways. The
original idea of a Wiki is to make information accessible to all. However, it is very interesting that
experiences in the use of Wikis in educational settings showed that security and data protection of wiki
contents is definitely an issue. In this paper, we discuss problems and solutions on the basis of use cases
from archaeological education. Interestingly, archaeologists are extremely worried about online accessible
information due to the serious danger of archaeological looting. “Tomb raiders”, i.e. people who excavate
artefacts of cultural heritage on the basis of information stored in Geowikis, so called archaeological looters,
are not aware of the value of cultural heritage, are interested only in the artefacts and destroying the cultural
context, which is of enormous interest for archaeological research. Consequently, the protection of
archaeological information is one of the most urgent tasks in the preservation of cultural heritage.
1 INTRODUCTION
Wikis are a Web technology for mass collaborative
authoring, offering the asset of free and easy access
for end users: everybody can contribute, comment
and edit (Gorman, 2005), (Ebner, Kickmeier-Rust &
Holzinger, 2008). However, during the discussion
after a talk at the conference Archaeology &
Computers in Vienna 2009 (Holzinger et al., 2009),
it was very interesting that security and data
protection of wiki contents is definitely an issue,
from the perspective of archaeologists – though
neglected by computer scientists. A look into the
field of Archaeology makes this obviously evident:
The archaeological heritage is under serious
threat from illegal and destructive excavations
(archaeological looting) aiming at recovering
antiquities for sale on the international market
(Brodie & Renfrew, 2005).
2 BACKGROUND
Year by year, thousands of archaeological
monuments are destroyed by building projects but
also by archaeological looters. In fact, looting is one
of the most serious problems in the protection of
archaeological heritage. Metal detecting, digging
without permission, non reporting of finds and
selling illegally excavated objects are forbidden in
many countries and – which people are often
unaware – are punished severely. A famous example
is the looting of several bronze weapons and a 30 cm
diameter bronze disk with gold inlays, later known
as the sky disk of Nebra with metal detectors on the
Mittelberg near Leipzig in Saxony-Anhalt
(Germany) in 1999. The disk, a unique object of the
16th century B.C. which is adorned with astral
symbols, turned up at the market in 2001,
subsequently confiscated by police in 2002, and is
120
Holzinger K., Holzinger A., Safran C., Koiner-Erath G. and Weippl E. (2010).
USE OF WIKI SYSTEMS IN ARCHAEOLOGY - Privacy, Security and Data Protection as Key Problems.
In Proceedings of the International Conference on e-Business, pages 120-123
DOI: 10.5220/0002982701200123
Copyright c
SciTePress
now exhibited in the Prehistoric Museum of
Halle/Saale (Meller, 2004).
Looters are fanatical collectors driven by
financial motivation or just the ecstasy of finding
objects. Looters are mostly interested in metal
objects, which can be easily located by metal
detectors (Connor & Scott, 1998). By digging up
and pulling out the objects, they destroy the
archaeological context and thus the possibility to
date and interpret the find. Even when these objects
are located on the market or in private collections,
the damage is irreparable.
Basically, looters do not rely (only) on online
information; however, looters are often supported by
official find reports that are nowadays widely
published in electronic media. These reports offer
descriptions and maps of find places and thus make
the localization of the monuments very easy.
3 MATERIALS & METHODS
At Graz University of Technology several studies
were carried out on how Wiki-systems could be used
for different purposes (Ebner, Zechner & Holzinger,
2006), (Ebner & Walder, 2007). In subjects
including Civil Engineering, Architecture, Geology,
Archaeology, etc. the use of GeoWikis can be of
great benefit (Priedhorsky & Terveen, 2008).
Such GeoWiki implementations are focussed on
the geographical aspect and are basically
implemented as editable maps. Due to specific
requirements of the subjects mentioned above, a
special GeoWiki, the so called TUGeoWiki has been
developed (Safran et al., 2009a), which focuses on
the description of the individual locations and the
connections between them. The design of the
TUGeoWiki server-side and client-side application
was based on four central requirements: Geotagging
Interface, Mobile and Desktop Interface,
Collaborative Environment and Map Mashup
(Auinger et al., 2009). The final requirement was to
provide the integration of external location-based
material, based on the coordinates available for
location articles in the TUGeoWiki. This enables the
integration of highly detailed material from external
sources without the need to provide such material
within the TUGeoWiki itself (the mashup concept).
The most obvious use for a mashup in the
TUGeoWiki’s case is the integration of mapping
material using an API, such as the Google Maps
API. Numerous other map APIs are available and
the integration of further material, such as geological
data, could also be considered. The final application
consists of two independent systems that fulfil the
requirements detailed above. Most of the interaction
is performed using a ediawiki, with specially
developed extensions within a mobile and/or
desktop browser. In order to make this extended
functionality available on a mobile device in the
field, additional mobile clients for the most common
platforms were implemented. On the client side, all
of the interaction is done with a browser, which
connects to a Mediawiki on the TUGeoWiki server.
The original Mediawiki is extended by two special
pages. The first offers a list of all geotagged articles
in the Wiki. More specifically, this page implements
the functionality for the creation of new locations
based on geographical coordinates. The second
special page supports the upload of images including
geographical coordinates. Within JPEG images,
additional information can be stored in a so-called
EXIF header. Besides metadata regarding a broad
range of standard information such as date, time, or
camera model, the EXIF header may also contain the
geographical coordinates of the image. This
information can either be added by a camera, when a
photo is taken, or added manually at a later date. The
server-side Mediawiki is further extended by a
template, which is applied to all newly created
location articles. The template contains a Google
map of the area around its coordinates and it links to
the corresponding location on Google Maps and
Microsoft Live Maps. Moreover, the template links
to another Mediawiki extension called GeoHack,
which constructs links to various geographical
services for the coordinates (Safran, Garcia-Barrios
& Ebner, 2009b). Finally, all location articles are
added to a common category.
4 USE CASES
A recent use case was the Zeğreg Tepe in the
territory of ancient Tavium in Asia Minor, a hill
where a famous Hellenistic and Roman sanctuary of
Zeus Tavianos is supposed to have been located
(Strobel & Gerber, 2000), (Koiner, Lohner-Urban &
Scherrer, 2010). There was a colossal bronze statue
of Zeus, and the sanctuary was known for its
asylum, i.e. the protection of people who were
persecuted. This sanctuary probably was built on a
Hittite temple of Teššub, the Hurritian and Hittite,
the weather god who was one of the predecessors of
the Greek Zeus. The Zeğreg Tepe is a hill with steep
flanks in the south, west and east and a more gentle
slope in the north, where the main entrance is to be
supposed to be located. The top of the hill is flat
USE OF WIKI SYSTEMS IN ARCHAEOLOGY - Privacy, Security and Data Protection as Key Problems
121
with some pronounced terraces to the south and east.
Surveying and air photographs located remains of
walls but also rocky structures. Restricting access to
these data is mandatory.
5 SOLUTIONS
Restricting access to any information and controlling
the use of it are basic security requirements usually
implanted in a process referred to as AAA:
Authentication, Authorization and Auditing
(Weippl, 2005).
Authentication. While there are three basic forms
of authentication (“What you are”, “What you
have”, “What you know”), it is mostly passwords,
passphrases or similar concepts that are used in Web
based applications. The major drawback is that end
users tend to select very weak passwords. If
combined with a token or certificate (“what you
have”) authorization becomes more powerful. For
Wikis in our specific context, client-side
authentication with tokens is feasible. Users have to
be given a certificate file that they install on their
computer. This certificate is then used to
authenticate the client to the Web server.
Authorization. Access Control mechanisms are
used to enforce restrictions of authorization. Various
security models for access control have been
proposed in the last few decades; one can distinguish
between discretionary access control (DAC) and
mandatory access control (MAC) and role-based
access control (RBAC).
DAC controls access to an object on the basis of
an individual user’s permissions and/or prohibitions.
This means that it is at the discretion of an object’s
owner to decide who has which kind of access. In
MAC, the system decides for the user how
information should be classified. Changing this
categorization to lower the level is commonly
prohibited in the Bell LaPadula model (Bell &
LaPadula, 1976); the no-write-down property
guarantees confidentiality. A role is a collection of
operations (on specific objects) needed for an
application. Assigning access rights to subjects
based on their role is called RBAC. RBAC is
commonly used in database systems as it offers two
main advantages. First and foremost, RBAC clearly
separates “what has to be done” from “who has to do
it” in that it assigns users to roles and defines
permissions on roles, which in turn takes effect
when users activate the corresponding role. Second,
RBAC clearly distinguishes an application’s object
model from the subject and authorization model
(Essmayr, Probst & Weippl, 2004). The object
model provides a view on objects to protect (e.g.,
tables, columns, entities), the subject model
highlights which entities are active within a system
(e.g., users, processes), and the authorization model
describes rules regulating access between subjects
and objects and the administration thereof (Weippl,
Ibrahim & Winiwarter, 2001). In Wikis with a
relatively small user group, role-based access control
can be effectively used on two layers. The users and
roles can be defined at application level (the Wiki)
and, in addition, in the database management
system. The Wiki uses, for each user, their database
account to connect to the database. While this
certainly impacts performance as connection pooling
is no longer possible, it clearly increases security.
Weaknesses in the Wiki application itself cannot be
used to access the database.
Auditing. Analyzing log files to determine who
accessed which data is useful to establish whether
the Wiki was compromised. Auditing clearly
requires reliable authentication and logging
mechanisms should be difficult to disable. A good
approach is to have two or three levels of logging:
(1) Web server logs show the requests made to the
Web server. (2) Logs on the application level
contain more details on which actions a user
performed. However, each application action must
have corresponding entry in the Web server log. (3)
Logs entries can also be generated inside the
database. These entries must again match log entries
on the other two levels. If inconsistencies between
the log files are detected then an attacker might, for
instance, have gained direct access to the database.
This can be detected because the database logs
would show activities not recorded on the
application level. Contemporary Wiki systems only
support these concepts rudimentarily, making further
development highly necessary.
6 CONCLUSIONS
During the last few years, Wiki systems have
become a well-used tool to enable online
collaborative work in education. Research has
shown the positive effect they can have on the
learning process. However, the issues of privacy and
security have up to now been neglected in this
context, though they are an important factor. A good
example is the application of Wiki-based systems in
the context of archaeological education. Though
especially location-based applications, such as
ICE-B 2010 - International Conference on e-Business
122
TUGeoWiki, can enhance the learning process and
working in this context, the sensitive nature of
archaeological data makes privacy and security a
key issue. Authentication, authorization and auditing
processes have been shown to be necessary
inclusions in the future development of Wiki
systems in this context. In this paper, we proposed
the implementation of a dual authentication for
Wikis to protect information stored in archaeological
Wikis. Improving authentication and authorization
will enable researchers to share more information
without the fear that looters will gain unauthorized
access to data and abuse the data. Moreover,
precautions can be taken to avoid unintentional
publication of hidden data such as location
information in images. Unprotected archaeological
monuments are highly susceptible to destruction by
looters, consequently data protection in this field is
highly important.
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A unified narrative exposition of the ESD/MITRE computer security model is presented. A suggestive interpretation of the model in the context of Multics and a discussion of several other important topics (such as communications paths, sabotage and integrity) conclude the report. A full, formal presentation of the model is included in the Appendix.